Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin is one of the OG's of crypto, having been created back in 2014 as a fork from the Bitcoin chain. Litecoin, which functions purely as a cryptocurrency, has an eventual cap that will be four times the number of coins available in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Transaction fees are currently much lower than with Bitcoin, and since Litecoin is commonly available for trading on fiat gateway exchanges, it is quite common for investors who seek to purchase altcoins to trade their fiat for Litecoin and then move Litecoin to an exchange specializing in alts. Unfortunately, at the present time, trading pairs do not commonly exist between Litecoin and alts, but once litecoin has been moved to an altcoin exchange, investors can do a trade from Litecoin to Bitcoin (which doesn't have lengthy confirmation times when being processed on-exchange) and then a second trade from Bitcoin to the desired altcoin.
Litecoin, being a member of the Bitcoin family, may benefit from technologies associated directly with Bitcoin. For example, the ability to do atomic swaps between Litecoin and Bitcoin (and other Bitcoin forks) is currently in development. Litecoin will be able to benefit from Lightning Network technology once that comes to public implementation. And Litecoin notably was the first coin to implement Segregated Witness, long before (and more successfully than) Bitcoin did.
Mining/Staking
Litecoin uses Proof of Work (mining) as a consensus mechanism. The maximum number of Litecoins to eventually be available will be 84 million. Blocks are mined more quickly than with Bitcoin, with a block being mined approximately every 2.5 minutes.
Development Team
The main celebrity associated with Litecoin is Charlie Lee, also known as Coblee. Charlie Lee has no financial stake in Litecoin, having sold all of his holdings in late 2017, but remains committed to the further development of Litecoin.
Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors
One main advantage of Litecoin is that it is a fork of Bitcoin. One main disadvantage of Litecoin is that it is a fork of Bitcoin. Litecoin benefits from technology that is [sometimes] originally developed for Bitcoin. Litecoin is also popular because it is faster and cheaper to use than Bitcoin. However, in the long term, unless second-layer solutions are developed to improve transaction throughput, Litecoin will probably suffer from some of the same challenges as Bitcoin when it comes to traffic congestion on the network. At present, Litecoin can only process a maximum of under sixty transactions per second (compared to seven per second on the Bitcoin network).
Additional Resources
The project's main website: https://litecoin.org
Link to Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin
Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin
Link to Twitter account: https://twitter.com/litecoin
Link to Team information: N/A
Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/coins/LTC
Whitepaper: N/A (loosely based on Bitcoin's white paper)